How Reliance Plans to Take On the Ecommerce Industry

Today, Reliance exists only in Mumbai as an ecommerce retailer. As of now, it allows its employees to shop for grocery goods online. However, they are planning to re-enter the ecommerce industry pan India.

Reliance Plans For Extension

Just like Walmart, Reliance seems to be trying to have a strong presence in offline as well as online mediums. Basically, here’s how reliance plans to enter the online shopping industry by this year end.

Products

Reliance plans to launch an online grocery shopping platform to deliver fresh goods in certain cities like their competitor Big Basket. Their products will include health care, pharmaceutical and food items. Eventually they plan to launch consumer electronics along with fashion and lifestyle products.

What can lead to their success?

Reliance has a well-established brand in the country and is highly trusted by Indian consumers. It already has experience in offline retailing of grocery, apparel and electronics with Reliance Fresh, Reliance Trends and Reliance Digital respectively. That way Reliance knows about the market better than most retailers. It also has a past experience in the ecommerce sector where it undertook B2B transactions online.

Competition

By the time Reliance launches all these products, it will be in direct competition with some strongly established online retailers such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon along with other start-ups. Its USP to sell groceries apart from other consumer goods will separate them from the herd. Otherwise, just like Flipkart or Snapdeal, there will be only aggressive competition. Reliance will have to match the prices and product ranges of these competitors in order to keep up with them.

Operations

As of now, Reliance is employing a large number of people with about 2000+ people for their office operations and another 10,000 for delivery and logistics. It is preparing the resources for a massive launch and to have a substantial impact on the ecommerce industry. It is planning to operate all over the country in all the major cities to stay in the same league as Flipkart and Snapdeal. Apart from this, it will set up headquarters for its grocery and electronic products in Mumbai, while the fashion retail segment will be headquartered in Bangalore.

Advantage

Reliance has existed in India well before any Flipkart or Snapdeal or Amazon. It was founded in 1960 and since then it has become one of India’s biggest companies till date along with the Tata Group. Not only does Reliance understand the market better, but it also has a vast customer base ready to be introduced to this project. Being such a huge company already, it can invest substantial amount of capital to launch this project effectively.